India and Pakistan

Unhappy holidays

A frosty weekend in Havana

COUNTRIES cannot choose their neighbours, Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, told the press on September 12th, but India and Pakistan have to talk to each other because their destinies are linked. Those downbeat words suggested a distinct lack of optimism as Mr Singh prepared for a meeting with President Musharraf of Pakistan, planned for this weekend in the margins of a Non-Aligned Movement conference in Havana. It will be the two leaders' first encounter for a year and the timing is not propitious. It comes just a week after bomb blasts killed more than 30 people at Malegaon in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

Mr Singh will reiterate India's belief that Pakistan is at least partly to blame for such blasts because it has failed to prevent (and many Indians believe it encourages) terrorists to cross into India. He will also give warning that Indian public opinion will not allow him to continue talking at all if the attacks do not stop. For his part, President Musharraf has said that he will be urging India to make concessions on the two countries' central quarrel over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Both men know however that neither can deliver in the foreseeable future on either score. The limited aim, instead, is to ease tensions by agreeing to resume regular talks between the country's top diplomats. Those talks were shelved after more than 180 people were killed in July by a series of explosions on busy commuter trains in Mumbai. Meanwhile, Mr Singh is expected to give up direct responsibility for the India-Pakistan relationship next week, when he plans to appoint a new foreign minister to take over the portfolio that he has held for ten months.

India blamed the Pakistan-supported Islamic Lashkar-e-Toiba for the Mumbai train blasts, but it was Muslims who were targeted at Malegaon, which has a long history of Hindu-Muslim tension. That led to suggestions that Hindu extremists might have been involved, though local police insist that the kind of explosives used point to Islamic groups. It is unlikely that much more will be discovered. India proceeds slowly with investigations and prosecutions on such cases. On September 12th four men were convicted by a Mumbai court for plotting explosions that killed 257 people in the city 13 years ago. Verdicts are still pending in a further 116 cases.

One of the reasons for a lack of progress is that Indian security forces often kill suspected terrorists rather than arresting them. This is frequently criticised both by counter-terror experts (because sources of information are lost) and by human-rights organisations. A new report on the Kashmir conflict by Human Rights Watch accuses India of summarily executing militants and reporting the deaths as the result of clashes with the army.

It said immunity given to troops in Kashmir encouraged them to commit abuses. The report also criticised militants for attacking civilians and noted that groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba, banned after the September 11th 2001 attacks, have been allowed to change their names and continue operating—exactly what Mr Singh will be telling Mr Musharraf. It is unlikely to be a joyous weekend break.